Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Biweekly Poll(s) - Preferences, Preferences

Two polls in one post, since they're semi-related. Basic preferences this time around, but a pretty interesting read. Overall, it looks like people prefer control over the story more than anything else. The length, or the ending aren't as important as the ability to see the impact of the choices made during the game. I think that's cool. Figure out how many choices to offer is always tricky. Not enough, and the player loses control. Too many, and each choice because less meaningful.

I prefer my visual novels to have...
Lots of choices
  158 (64%)
Lots of endings
  156 (63%)
A long read
  107 (43%)
Lots of characters
  107 (43%)
A happy ending
  134 (54%)
A really, really bad ending
  55 (22%)


Votes so far: 244 

In a mystery game, I...
Only solve the case.
  60 (27%)
Aim for the bad endings.
  25 (11%)
Try to get all the endings.
  157 (72%)
Look for side stories.
  130 (59%)

Votes so far: 218

1 comment:

Lex said...

I tried offering hundreds of choices with three dozen endings. This made each run through about 5 minutes long and the paths extremely complicated. It also caused the players to go over the same paths again and again, especially if they didn't have a strategy. Most people that we polled said that they thought the chapters could be a little longer, or they would rather have a few endings with longer chapters than what we did...